


Ghost Boy

by Not_An_Alien



Series: Voltron Shorts [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gay Keith (Voltron), M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 12:23:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16786897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Not_An_Alien/pseuds/Not_An_Alien
Summary: Prompt: "You grew up with your imaginary friend who was only considered imaginary because you were the only one who could see the ghost who wandered through the halls of your house."~Lance was probably too curious for his own good. When he first sees the boy that can walk through walls, he is instantly compelled to learn more about him.





	Ghost Boy

Lance first saw Keith when he was four years old.

His family had just moved to America from their home country, Cuba. They managed to get a nice house for a decent price. This was mainly because it was older and things were more likely to break down.

Lance was wandering through the halls of his new home by himself one day when he saw a little boy with messy black hair standing at the end of the hallway. Lance found it weird how he could partially see through the boy, but he decided to ignore it.

Lance, being the naive and friendly child he was, promptly grinned and waved at the boy, who gasped and ran away. The only problem was, there were no more halls for the boy to run through and so he ran through the wall, leaving a puzzled Lance wondering how he did it.

~

"Mama, I just saw a boy run through the wall," Lance said after running downstairs to find his parents unpacking.

His mom only paused for a moment to tell her son that that was impossible, and when Lance tried to argue, she handed her son's bag to him and told him to go upstairs and start unpacking his things.

~

That evening, after everyone had mostly finished unpacking, Lance found his way back to the wall he had seen the boy run through.

"Maybe that wall isn't actually there and I can just run through it myself," Lance thought.

Later, when his mom asked how Lance had gotten a giant bruise on his forehead, he claimed that he had just fallen down the stairs.

~

The next day, Lance decides to ask his older brother Marco about the boy.

"Oh, that was definitely a ghost, dude," Marco said, not looking away from his video games.

"A ghost?" Lance asked.

"Yes," Marco confirmed. "A ghost."

"Are you sure?" Lance questioned.

Marco shrugged. "If you don't believe me, maybe you should ask him."

~

Lance sees Keith again later that week.

This time, the boy was standing by the window in the dining room by himself. He gazed outside as if longing to venture out there even for a minute.

Lance, not wanting the boy to run away again, snuck up very quietly behind the boy before saying a very loud "Hello!"

The boy yelped and turned around quickly, his hair flying everywhere as he did so.

"Are you a ghost?" Lance asked just as his brother instructed him to do.

"Um," the boy says hesitantly. "Yes?"

"I knew it!" Lance says brightly, his face lightly up.

"How can you see me?" The boy asked.

Lance just shrugged and made an "I don't know" sound. "My name is Lance," he introduced himself. "What's your name?"

"Keith..."

Lance smiled and reached out, shaking the boy's hand. "Nice to meet you!"

~

After that, Lance would talk to Keith as often as he could. Keith would add some input on occasion, but he was typically more content listening to Lance go on about the ocean, a new song he learned, or whatever new story Lance came up with that day.

One day, Lance's Aunt Amelia came over to visit. Seeing Lance continuously talk to nothing, she decided to ask her older twin sister about it.

"Oh, that's just Lance's imaginary friend," Rosa chuckled. "He says his name is Keith."

And so the story of Lance and his imaginary friend, Keith stuck around for years, despite Lance's protests that his friend was actually real.

~

One day, when Lance was eight years old, he decided to question something.

"How come you have been aging the last four years, too? I thought ghosts didn't do that."

Keith looked up from the book he was reading. "I can actually change my appearance to be whatever age I want to be. I was four for twenty years."

"So you'd be, like, twenty-eight now?" Lance asked.

Keith shrugged. "Something like that."

~

Lance noticed that Keith liked to read. He always read the same book. Lance never knew what Keith was reading. Every time he'd ask, Keith would just magically make the book disappear, which got annoying after a while.

One day, Lance walked into his room to see Keith sleeping on his bed with the book he was always reading still open on his stomach.

"I thought ghosts didn't sleep," he said aloud, then shrugged and picked the book up off of Keith. Just then, Keith started to wake up, but not before Lance saw the title of his book.

"'The Princess and the Frog,' huh?" Lance asked, admiring the delicate art on the front cover.

At that, Keith snapped to attention, stealing the book back from Lance without a moment's hesitation. "Yes, and I happen to enjoy it," he said angrily. "Why does it matter to you?"

"Dude," Lance said, sitting down on the bed next to Keith, "I'm not making fun of you. I really like that story, too."

Keith looked at him curiously. "Why's that?"

Lance shrugged. "I guess it just shows that you can never judge a book by its cover."

~

Lance was thirteen when he burst into his room with an emergency.

"Keith, I need your help!"

Keith looked up from his book he was reading while lounging on Lance's bed. "With what?"

Lance dramatically plopped down onto the bed next to Keith and started his story. "Okay, so, there's this really cute girl in my class, her name is Nyma, and I may or may not have asked her to the spring dance next month and she said yes."

Keith closed his book and gently put it in his lap. "So what do you need help with?"

Lance looked his friend in the eye. "I have literally no idea how to go from here."

"And you think I do?" Keith asked. "You're the only person I've spoken to in the last twenty-seven years."

"Yes, I know," Lance said, "but you like reading about romance, right?" He gestured to the book Keith had in his lap.

"I guess," Keith said, unsure. "I mean, I guess I enjoy the concept of a guy turning into a frog a little more, but..."

"Great!" Lance exclaimed. "That means you can somewhat help me with Nyma!"

The two boys spent the next couple of hours going over possible scenarios that Lance could go through while taking Nyma to the dance. Lance even got Keith to wear one of his sister's dresses and role play. Eventually, Lance's mom called him down for dinner and he had to go.

Lance was halfway out the door when he heard Keith say, "Hey, Lance?"

Lance turned around to face the boy who was standing sheepishly next to his bed. "Yeah?"

"Would you..." Keith started, avoiding meeting Lance's gaze, "would you still like me if I liked boys instead of girls?"

Lance smiled genuinely to his friend before crossing the room to wrap him in his arms. "Of course I would, Keith."

Keith, only half aware of how much his face was burning, slowly wrapped his arms around his incredibly affectionate friend's middle and tucked his face into his shoulder. "Thank you," he muttered.

~

A month later, Keith was waiting for Lance when he walked in the front door.

"How was the dance?" Keith asked.

Lance grimly looked over to where Keith was sitting on the window sill. "Apparently, we forgot to prepare for the scenario for when she ditches you to go make out with some other dude in the girls' bathroom."

"Oh," Keith said. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine," Lance dismissed. "Right now, I just want to get out of this itchy suit and watch a movie or something."

Keith's face lit up. "Can we watch Star Wars?"

Lance chuckled. "As long as we're not watching the prequels, I'm fine with that."

Lance continued to smile as Keith celebrated on their way upstairs to Lance's room.

~

When Lance was sixteen, he learned how Keith died.

Or, in this case, how he disappeared.

Lance was hanging out in his school's computer lab in early October with his two friends, Hunk and Pidge, when he saw something on Pidge's computer screen that caught his attention.

"Why are you researching that?" Lance asked, leaning over Pidge's chair to get better look at the computer screen.

"Well," Pidge explained, "I thought it would be fun to try and find a ghost this Halloween, so I'm looking up tragedies from around the area. Particularly child deaths in the last hundred and fifty years." She scrolled down some to show Lance a list of names and ages, presumably of kids and how old they were when they died. "Elizabeth James, age seven, Frederick Gates, age six, Leah Drake, age five, Keith Kogane, age four, Grace-"

"Wait, what was the last one?" Lance asked suddenly.

"Keith Kogane, age four," Pidge repeated, confused. "Why?"

"What happened to him?" Lance asked before he could control himself. If anyone should be telling Lance how Keith died, it should be Keith. However, Keith never really liked to talk about when he died, and Lance was way to curious for his own good.

"Uh, let's see," Pidge clicked the link attached to his name and started reading the article that popped up. "Four year old Keith Kogane was first reported missing by his parents, Heith and Krolia Kogane, on Saturday, October 13th, 1984. After a month of searching for their lost son, Mr and Mrs Kogane were found dead in their home..." Pidge looked at the address and picture of house included with the article. "Lance, this is your house," Pidge commented. "Do you think that there are some ghosts living in your place?"

Lance shrugged absently, mind still focused on what had happened to Keith. "Maybe," he practically whispered.

~

"Keith, how did you disappear?" Lance asked suddenly. The two of them were sitting in the kitchen up against the glass doors that led to the backyard. They'd been absently chatting about their favorite constellations and astronomy in general, something they'd recently discovered they both enjoyed, when Lance finally got the courage to ask.

"I... I, um," Keith stuttered, "I don't like to talk about it."

"Oh... okay. I, uh, I understand," Lance said, embarrassed. "Was it hard for you when your parents died?" For a minute, Lance was scared he had crossed the line and Keith would get mad at him, but then Keith sighed and started talking.

"Yeah, it was," he said sadly. "They were killed by the same woman who did this to me."

"What do you mean?" Lance asked.

"When my parents and I moved in here, we didn't know that we lived next to a witch named Honerva, better known as Haggar. Apparently, my ball that I used to play with went into her yard one to many times or something because she broke into my bedroom one night and cursed me to be a ghost for who knows how long. Probably forever." Keith paused for a moment before he kept talking. "After a couple weeks, my parents started to get wind of what had happened."

"How?" Lance interrupted.

"I don't know. Now be quiet so I can finish my story." Lance shut his mouth and kept listening. "But anyway, they eventually decided to confront the witch about my disappearance, and in order to keep herself from being caught, she..." Keith cut himself off. It was only then that Lance noticed he'd started crying. "The police decided that it was a double suicide from the grief of losing me. I was the only one that knew the truth, but I couldn't do anything." He paused for a moment to wipe a few tears away. "I- I never even got to say goodbye, Lance."

Gently, as if not to disturb his friend, Lance leaned down and hugged his crying friend, holding him close to his chest as Keith gripped his shirt and continued to sob. They stayed there for a while, wrapped up in each other's arms, until Keith pulled away, smiled sadly, and said, "Thank you so much for sticking by me, Lance. You have no idea how much it means to me."

By this point, there were a few tears sliding down Lance's cheeks as well. "Anytime, Keith."

~

Two years later, Lance and Keith were presented by what was probably the biggest problem they'd faced.

"I can't believe my little boy has graduated!" Rosa said excitedly, wrapping her son in her arms.

"I can't believe it either, Mama," Lance said, gently returning the hug.

"And then you're going to college in the fall," Rosa continued.

"Yeah," Lance said. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Keith watching the exchange from the hallway. At the mention of college, he immediately turned around and ran upstairs.

"Oh no..." Lance thought as the realization of what college meant for them came crashing down. As soon as he was able to excuse himself from where his family was gathered, he rushed upstairs to his room to find Keith sitting on his bed in a fetal position and his head resting between his knees.

"Keith-" Lance started, but Keith cut him off.

"So that's it, huh?" Keith asked, looked up at Lance. "You leave for college and I'm alone here again."

"It doesn't have to be that way," Lance argued.

"What other way could there be?" Keith asked, his eyes filling with tears. "You can't live here forever, and it's not like I can leave this stupid house. Trust me, I've tried. You're going to go off the college, get a good job, meet a nice girl, get married, and have two perfect children, then move into a non-haunted house with a white picket fence and no sign that I ever existed, and I'm just going to be alone here for another twenty years-"

"Keith!" Lance snapped, ignoring the possibility of his family hearing him. He just wanted Keith to stop talking. He sat down on the bed next to him and spoke gently. "That's not going to happen. I don't know how it's going to work out, but there is no way I'm ever going to let you be alone, Keith. I love you too much to do that to you."

Keith sniffed. "You what?" He asked. It was at that moment, Lance realized...

He messed up.

He had never thought about how he felt about Keith any farther than his best friend, but now, as they sat together for what could be one of the last times, Lance realized that he truly, fully was in love with Keith Kogane, and he was going to make sure he knew.

"I love you, Keith," he said sincerely.

Keith stared at him in shock for a few moments before a large grin broke out on his face. "I love you, too."

With a smile, Lance did what no human had probably ever done before.

He kissed a ghost.

It started as a simple brush of the lips, but it slowly deepened into something more, something that Lance needed more than anything else at that moment. As they went on, Keith somehow started to feel more solid in Lance's arms, which he didn't question much before he continued to kiss the boy in front of him, until Keith moved and straddled his hips, leaning down to deepen the kiss even further.

After what felt like an eternity, but Lance wished lasted longer, they both pulled away, only to come to the same realization at the same time.

Lance could no longer see through Keith.

For years, there was a slight transparency to Keith that both of them were constantly aware of at first, but had grown to get used to it over the years, but now, Keith was completely solid and Lance could feel a heartbeat in the boy's chest that had never been there before. Lance and Keith realized this and smiled wider than they'd ever smiled in their lives, immediately pulling each other back into a tight embrace.

Keith was alive, and no curse could ever separate them again.

**Author's Note:**

> The Princess and the Frog was somewhat foreshadowing, y'all.


End file.
